The Technology Tree / A Modern Pirate's Guide to Scallywaggery

The Technology Tree / A Modern Pirate's Guide to Scallywaggery

By Rafael Antonio C. San Diego

Technology has branched out
into different subfields,
each one twelve terabytes
embedded in my silicon
subconscious. I have accepted
that Calculus is just poetry
I will never understand.
My olden imagination
slithers across these new words,
which emit a vibrant sequence
of code while Merriam-Webster remains
The Holy Catholic Pope of the English
Language. Meanwhile, the words out there
are molesting each other and wearing
each other’s definitions.

I want to know how a cell
grows along with a microchip
and creates a cyborg. I want to know
what singularities will do to a tachyon
that defies the speed of light. Is biology
a leaf
upon which to photosynthesize
my ideas about being?
A man really is just tissue
and bone. Let me copy the genes
of a toad and splice their regenerative
traits onto my being. Let me trace
my roots to stardust and surrender
to evidence of extraterrestrial existence.

Creation,
then, is but an experience.
Let’s create our own trees. Let’s
laser them into existence
as we cross-pollenate species
and raise funds to preserve
the rainforest. Save the
Tarsiers! Say no to mining!
Hug your local shrub! Evolution
Is my Eden, and Time is my
Armageddon. Each page
of the universe, a hard-drive
of data just begging to implode.
At the very last page,
there’s a button, asking you
If you want to reboot.
Origin is a cycle, I say.
So charge your batteries.
Secure your SLI slots and screw in
the cooling fan.
Hoist the browser sails
and set a course for Google!
Let’s hack every shore
across the screens
of our jailbreaks.
And start a spam chain
to destroy all the meme data
about those god-damn facebook cats.

Biography

Rafael Antonio C. San Diego began writing poetry in 2003 and has won a second-prize national award for his poetry. His first book of poems, Second World (UST Publishing House), will come out this year. He proudly serves at present under President Benigno S. Aquino III as a correspondence officer.